1 – Modelling of materials for sports equipment

Abstract The chapters in Part II of this book cover the design and materials used in particular sports with an emphasis on how the interrelationship of design and materials affects performance. In the field of sports equipment—as in all other applications such as aerospace, automotive, and biomedical—it is the combination of materials and design that achieves the requirements specific to that application. The most suitable materials for the application are, therefore, those that most completely and readily achieve the mix of properties (mechanical, physical, chemical, and nontechnical) in the desired shapes and dimensions. In this way “sports materials” do not differ from any other type of “material,” but are materials designed for the operating conditions pertinent to sporting applications. Of the particular sports covered in Part II, the operating conditions are between −5°C and +40°C, involve exposure to moisture, and cover a range of strain rates. Additionally, sports equipment, such as bats and clubs, interact strongly with the athletes using them. This includes force transfer and vibrations to the athletes, whose soft tissue can suffer damage and injury at strains and strain rates that would be negligible for structures such as aircraft or power generation plants.